Who decides?

(The Pavement, 3 July 2010) If you’ve struggled with a drug or alcohol addiction, refused help from an outreach worker or had mental health problems, chances are you’ve been discussed at a Safer Streets partnership meeting. Also known as multi-agency meetings or Local Strategic Partnerships meetings, these gatherings take place in boroughs across London and are a chance for homeless service providers to get together and discuss how to help individual rough sleepers off the streets.

To give you an insight into what is decided at these meetings, we spoke to Sam Ball, deputy director for London of Crime Reduction Initiatives (CRI), the national social care charity which is commissioned by Camden Council to run Camden Safer Streets Team (SST).

Input is also provided by “Community Auditors” from StreetSafe, a Camden SST scheme through which, Mr Ball explained: “concerned members of the community can report on street activity directly to a single point of contact and are assured of a prompt and helpful response”.

Of these agencies, representatives from the Drug and Alcohol Agencies; Drug Intervention Programme; Police; Hostel Providers; Day Centres; Drop-in Services and Street Wardens attend regular meetings at Camden SST’s London regional office. These so-called “tasking and targeting meetings” take place every fortnight in King’s Cross, Holborn, Bloomsbury and Camden Town, with two additional monthly meetings for the north of the borough. Organised by Camden SST, each meeting is chaired by the team leader responsible for that area.

So what is the purpose of this type of partnership meeting, a format used by many local authorities? “It’s designed to allow coordination of a comprehensive and consistent care package for clients,” explains Mr Ball. “It includes both service interventions and enforcement interventions where appropriate.”

The implementation of these enforcement tactics, such as Anti Social Behaviour Orders (Asbos), is made clear by Camden Safer Street Team to homeless people in the borough, according to Mr Ball: “On initial contact we explain that street activity is considered anti-social behaviour and that continuation of that behaviour could lead to enforcement.

“We do it this way because we’re aware then that we’re able to give a clear, consistent and honest message to clients. Our aim is to enable people to break free from harmful patterns of behaviour, therefore reducing the impact of this on the individual and as well as on the community around them.”

A “care package” – also known as a service plan or care plan – is basically a way of identifying what support or services you need. “Decisions are made about which agencies need to be involved in a case,” explains Mr Ball. “In terms of hostels, for instance, each hostel has a specific designation, for instance those able to cater for individuals with mental health needs or those requiring continued-use placements”.

Rather than discussing budgets and homeless services in general, the meetings are focused on the “clients”. For Mr Ball, “it isn’t about funding, it doesn’t come down to that – it’s who is best placed to meet this client’s needs. That’s very much the focus of those meetings.”

So deciding, for example, increased funding for drug and alcohol rehabilitation is not on the agenda. “That’s kind of out of our hands,” Mr Ball explains. “We might request and advocate for that on behalf of the client if we felt they needed that but we wouldn’t be able to make that decision.”

According to a street count carried out on 22 April 2009, Camden has just six rough sleepers. However, statutory homelessness figures for January-March 2010 (Supplementary tables – Local Authority Breakdown – Statutory Homelessness: 1st Quarter (January to March) 2010, England) identify 668 people in temporary accommodation in Camden, plus 88 instances where duty of care is owed but accommodation has not yet been secured.

With such a fluid homeless population, the partnership selects particular people to discuss at each meeting. “We wouldn’t necessarily go through every single client known to Camden Safer Streets Team because, as you know, there can be a changing picture and we want to prioritise in terms of need … to make sure people get the right level of input in a timely manner,” Mr Ball adds.

After the meeting, the next step is to offer targeted support to clients. “Obviously we’d want to agree a care plan with the client so … if we or the client were to identify that actually they might benefit from, [for example], a mental health service then we’d look to do what we can to support them to engage with that service and get that service involved.”

Although Camden SST has a contract with Camden Council, they are not required to give the council an exhaustive account of every meeting. “We wouldn’t report back, naturally,” says Mr Ball. “But, as with any service provision, our communication with the council happens along the lines with which they commission us, so we have an ongoing communication with Camden Council.”

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